by Jeffrey Lent
She woke to pelting rain and jabs of lightning in a shimmering twilight, her ankles and hair wet from the rain through the windows and a mild panic but the truck cranked and she sloughed her way out through the sticky mud of the track back onto the highway and the storm was gone and she rolled down the windows as the twilight turned golden behind her and then all around as she passed a black-and-white metal sign with the legend MAINE upon it.
The land was more level though she sensed hills in the distance and roadside were stands of big paper birches, now and then an ash or maple but crowded close were towering hemlocks and tamaracks. It was a land new and strange, on a scale of wildness unlike home.
She filled the truck with gas in Bethel and then stopped at a small Red & White store. An older woman sat behind the counter working a crossword puzzle from a rag-paper book of them, the woman in a sleeveless yellow floral print dress with an open white cardigan over it, her hair in a severe bun that seemed to stretch taut her otherwise plump face. Katey got a can of Vienna sausages, a tin of sardines, a box of crackers and asked the woman to cut a piece of cheese from the wheel under a glass dome beside the cash register.
“How much?” the woman asked.
“Bout like this.” She held up a thumb and finger an inch apart. The woman cut the wedge and wrapped it in paper and tied brown twine around it. While the woman was doing this she went to a red soda cooler and lifted the lid, reached down into the zinc-lined case and the ice water and lifted out a bottle of Coca-Cola and set it on the counter next to her purchases.
The woman said, “A dime and nineteen and nineteen again, thirty-two cents for the cheese and the crackers is fifteen. Ninety-five cents, the best part of a dollar.” She snapped open a small paper bag. “Where you headed?”
Katey pulled a crumpled dollar from her jeans pocket and smoothed it and laid it on the counter. “Right now I’m looking for a cheap place to spend the night.”
“Down the road about five miles is Mosley’s. They got tourist cabins. Tell em Nita up to the store sent you. This early in the summer even on a Friday night two three cabins at least will be setting there waiting.” She cranked open the till, laid a nickel on the counter and took up the bill. “You all right, honey? You in trouble?”
Katey smiled. “I’m fine. I’m just heading down to the coast to see the ocean. I never have and been wanting to. I graduated high school last week and thought this was the time.” It was so easy to lie, against everything she’d ever been taught. There was a sense of power, within, of controlling a situation.
Nita nodded and said, “It’s something to see.”
Katey took her Coke and popped the top off against the opener on the side of the case and the top fell into the box welded to the side there, lifted the bottle and drank off two slow swallows and then said, “You was me, first time? Where would you go?”
The woman nodded again and dipped her head in thought, then looked up and smiled. She was missing a tooth in the front of her mouth. She said, “I was you I’d head to Damariscotta and then down to Pemaquid Point. You’ll smell it before you ever see it. You have to park up by the lighthouse and walk down. That’s the place. You go there, you’ll know why I sent you.”
Katey said, “Damariscotta. To Pemaquid. Got it. Thank you.” She took up her small sack of groceries and turned toward the dusk of the day beyond the screen door of the store.
The woman called from behind her. “Honey? You got to change roads a bunch of times to get there. You got a map?”
She turned and hooked the sack on a canted hip and said, “I got a map. A good one. Those people, the ones with the cabins? Their name’s Mosley?”
The woman nodded. “They’ll feed you pie for breakfast.”
Katey grinned and turned and walked through the screen door onto the porch where the daylight was falling toward long summer twilight and she turned and called back to the lit inside, “Thank you, Nita.”
“It wasn’t nothing. Good luck, honey.”
She slept that night hard and dreamless and in the morning sat at the kitchen table with the Mosley wife and five little boys and drank coffee from a big white and blue speckled enamel pot and ate pies made from last year’s canned blueberries and venison mincemeat studded with raisins, the crusts rich with lard. The Mosley man had left before daylight to drive north most of an hour to work in the woods and the boys peppered her with the questions of boys and she answered with smiles and the least said as she could. She caught the wife studying her, a woman who didn’t have to know the secret to know she was hearing one. Katey smiled and left under a robin’s-egg sky, a skim of high haze.
She stopped twice to study the map and once had to backtrack near a dozen miles because she’d reversed a number in her head but made Damariscotta an hour after noon. Twice she’d crossed long bridges and thought she was crossing bays or inlets but signs told her she’d crossed first the Sheepscot River and then the Damariscotta River and the size of them awed her a bit and excited her greatly. In the Sheepscot beneath the bridge there’d been a pair of old wooden ships, still sprouting masts and spars, heavy ropes weathered almost black and she wondered how old they were and why they’d just been left there and then was on up over the arching bridge and there were gulls in flurries all about the bridge, their raucous harsh cries a sweet counterpoint to the dense funk of air. The sky had grown low and leaden, a pounded sheet of rippling metal, and down the rivers she saw large fishing boats making way back upstream as sailboats of all sizes angling with or against the wind, most headed downstream. She turned the radio off and dangerously leaned to crank down the passenger window and a blaring horn allowed her to jerk the truck back into her lane where she waved and smiled at the angry fist of the frightened driver as they passed each other.
She hadn’t eaten since breakfast but wouldn’t stop now. She made her way through Damariscotta and found the road leading down the peninsula, a road of mixed gravel and packed broken shells and around her the fields gave way to scrubland covered with juniper circles and sprawls of low bushes with dark, almost purple leaves, the houses also grew small, none more than a story and a half and time to time she’d round a curve and the ocean spread before her but from a height, the white foam of waves breaking and stippling the surface of the long reach of water, closing again so only the land and sky were to be seen, then a sudden glimpse downward toward a small harbor with houses and sheds and wharves or a small cove lined with stunted evergreens, a single fishing boat caught there motionless. She passed through Bristol and then New Harbor and both times wanted to stop, to walk about these places, these villages by the sea but drove onward.
As she went the sky grew more dark and it seemed the water did also. The sky so many gray-wool fleeces piled against each other and seeming just overhead yet stretching endless as the sky spread wide and far and she realized she was almost at the end of land. Strange almost, as she was still high upon a ridge, much of the water hidden as the road twisted and turned.
She turned a last curve and the stark white tower of the lighthouse stood before her, topped with a black-painted lantern room. Next to the tower was a small building set with windows, perhaps a storage shed, perhaps the keeper’s house. She could not tell. The parking lot was empty but for an older Dodge truck parked alongside the lighthouse. She cut the engine and rolled to a stop. After so long waiting for this, she simply sat in the cab. Listening to the lift and roar of the breaking waves somewhere on the rocks below. That she could not yet see. But the sound rose up through her, gooseflesh broke her skin and she shivered and laughed at the same time. Beyond, at a far distance, great enough so there was a discernible arc, lay the horizon where the sky met the sea. Wiping sudden tears from her eyes she stepped down out of the truck.
She wanted to approach the tower, the possible house, to see if she could find the keeper but was overcome with a deep shyness. Thinking the sort of man who’d have this work would be a solitary man, not wanting to be bothered by stupid questions, questi
ons at least that he’d find stupid. So she circled about and found a path that led onto the ledges below the light.
The ledges were much higher and wider than she’d expected, leading downward in a multitude of choices before leveling out as they narrowed into a long spit of heaved-up rock, the ledges almost pale white here where only rain struck them but further below and out the spit they darkened to charcoal where the tides overran them, where at the edges there were rising slaps of waves breaking white suds, smacking upward before sliding back.
She made her way, a few times easing down with her palms on the stone behind her as she scooted slow and cautious on her bottom along a wider or steeper ledge. And was glad she was alone this day, overcome with an abundance of caution she’d not want witnessed. As she descended the ledges she also descended toward the booming of the breaking ocean and the sound was magnificent and with its rhythmic constancy greater than any thunderstorm she’d ever known, much greater than ice-out on the river, a power that she began to feel pulsing as if it would meet and join her heartbeat. The only sound otherwise came from a pair of gulls that swarmed about her head, their cries incessant and hungry, their furious wingbeats unheard.
At the bottom of the ledges the base of the spit was still wide, the way forward an uneven mix of slabs and juts of stone. On both sides the surf was breaking but still far away and she’d gotten used to the sudden surges and the spillover and the draining off. She made her way along and found she was indeed where two worlds met: The stones held pools of water and, hands on her knees, she studied the shells and broken claws both dark green and bleached white, the long gnarled strands of seaweed upon the rocks, here and again small fish flashing iridescent silver in the pools. Racks of stones the size of her fist lodged between fissures on the rock, other places streams of wet gravel of rust-red, black, green, blue, white, all brilliant and glistening as if refracting light pulled from the depths. Shards of blue and green bottle-glass worn smooth to a softness at the edges when she picked them up. A slender long bone lay dried and caught in a crevice of the higher rocks and she plucked it up and held it. Turning it about in her fingers. A bone so light it was as if she held nothing at all, the wingbone of some seabird. She wanted to keep it but also wanted her hands free and knew it would shatter in the pockets of her jeans and so glanced once behind her and saw not only was she alone but was far out from the ledges, the lighthouse still seeming solid but much smaller than she expected. She turned back and once again unbuttoned the top of her blouse and eased the bone down under the mid-strap of her bra, turning it gently so it was caught by the strap but aligned not up and down but almost sideways against her own ribs.
She turned back to face the ocean and the spit of land and for a moment remained fully upright, her chin lifted, her spirit high. She was farther out than she’d thought and now the breaking waves flooded lightly both sides close enough so they approached her sneakers. But she could now see the horizon of sky and sea meeting on a flat plane and far out a break in the clouds cast a sheet of lemon light down upon far distant waters and she felt the great joy of being in a place she’d always dreamed and now, here, found it to be as complicated and beautiful as all her life and she thought this was how it should be.
She went forward down the spit. Which was narrowing, the splash of surf higher and closer but she walked upright, no more caution of hands and feet, not striding but feeling her way upon this place of long dreams. One wave boiled high and soaked her feet and ankles and then was gone in a slippery froth of bubbles. Then came another and she was slightly giddy with the notion of the ocean finally meeting her in this way, the seas touching her as if welcoming her home. And yet each footfall forward she looked carefully how she set that foot down, found her weight there, her balance, and then moved up the other foot. She was delighted and cautious. She was in homage.
There came before her a high slab that cut across the spit at an angle, steep-sided and nearly smooth, the rock face dry as water swarmed around it, making a trough one side to the other at the base. Half again as high as she was and knife-edged at the top, as if some ancient giant being had been knapping a flint and grown weary or abandoned the job and left it here as a guard against those enemies who might come from the waters. Fissures ran like woodgrain across the slab and she paused and studied them and knew she could lie flat against it and make her way up to see what she would see upon the other side. She sloshed through the tide-flow before the slab and felt the hard suck of opposing currents against her calves but then was sprawled against the face of the rock, arms outstretched to reach high, her feet lifting one then the other to find purchase. She rose and her hands caught the top and she pulled herself up so she was peering down the other side.
She gulped air and held it, her fingers clenched against the rock. Below her was a dense dark water, lifting as if by a bellows, lungs of some vast kind, the water heaving and falling but slowly sliding against the rock, welling slightly and falling away and welling again. A presence of great fatal danger, lazy within its own power, coiling and uncoiling, coiling again. And though she could not see beneath that viscous surface she felt the unfathomable depth of the water, and most of all, what made the greatest flush of terror through her was knowing if she offered herself to the water as she’d imagined doing all these years, this water would suck her down and kill her while all around her the water continued doing only what the water did. The crash of ocean meeting land. Timeless and eternal and without care for those creatures great or small that might be trapped at this juncture and perish from the earth. She was shaking and very cold and yet could not break her gaze from the waters below, a thrall of terror within her. She clung hard to the slab of rock.
A gull beat down toward her, close above, hovering as if to learn if she was food and she looked up and raised one hand and batted it away. The gull swung and in long elegant glides swept away over the waves off to sea. She kept her eyes on the bird even as she clamped her hand again upon the rock, the slab she lay up against. A great and ancient wall that stood before her and the ocean. She was cold and sweating and turned her head sideways and laid her cheek against the cool rock.
With deliberate caution she made her way halfway back up the ledges and turned to sit, knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them, her chin on one knee. From the moments against the rock now far away below until now she’d been of a curious mind; not blank so much as a heightened intensity of focus upon her movements that seemed to close out the world around her except for the inescapable pound of the waves upon the rocks.
Off to the southwest the sun had come out, streaming over her shoulder, afternoon light against the water and the dark scud of clouds paling east and north before her, the water vast and fractured by light on inward rolling waves to the horizon. Her back was warm; her feet in her sodden sneakers still cold.
This is it, she thought. How it will go. Whatever I find will be different from what I thought.
Still gazing out at the sea.
And then felt her hunger, the long day since her pie breakfast and with that knew she had to get along. She stood and turned her back on the sea and above her at the top of the ledges there stood a man looking down at her. He wore green khaki trousers and a blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves; a sheaf of white hair tore back and forth across his head in the wind. She walked up toward him and he watched her come. As she grew close she saw his face was weathered and folded in creases but his eyes were of a clear pale blue. He hailed her with a lifted hand before she was within speaking distance and she did the same and went on toward him.
Once before him she found she was still breathless.
He said, “I saw you out there. A wonder, isn’t it?”
She could only nod but her brain was whirring, knowing this was the man of the lighthouse.
He nodded back. “It’s a odd day. The glass is dropping. That bit a sun is about to be snuffed out. Radio reports a mighty storm off of Hatteras.” He shrugged. “Most all it means for us, l
ikely, is a couple days of rain, maybe a bit airy. But then again, could boil on up from there and come upon us a full-blown storm.” He looked away from her and looked back. “Name’s Fred Jewett. I’m the keeper.” He stuck out a hand.
She took it and shook firm as she’d been taught. “I’m Katey Snow. Good to meet you, Mr. Jewett.”
He looked off at the sky and fished a pack of Lucky Strikes from his shirt pocket, tapped one free and dug a dented Zippo from his trousers and spun the wheel with his thumb and made fire. He watched the smoke and then said, “Your first time here?”
“I drove a couple days to see the ocean and now I have.”
“It’s awe-inspiring, isn’t it?”
“It is. A little frightening too, up close.”
He nodded. “I’m here every day. And it amazes me every day.” He paused, then said, “It’s like looking at the stars. When you really look. You know?”
“Yeah.” She grinned, suddenly shy.
As if he felt it, he said, “I got to get on.” And gestured with his head toward the building. “Anything more I can do for you?”
“I appreciate your time,” she said. Then she said, “I’m wicked hungry. Is there a good place to eat that won’t empty my pockets, Mr. Jewett?”
“It’s the coast,” he said. “Long as you like fish you’ll eat good anywhere. I like Tommy’s up New Harbor, myself. There’s a sign.”
She took his hand again and shook it. “Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.”
He nodded again, looked off and she knew he was done with her. She stepped around him and crossed toward her truck. The other truck, what she’d assumed was his, was gone. As she pulled open the driver door he called after her.
“Keep an eye on the weather.”